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Reviews
Leave the World Behind (2023)
Kept getting better until it kept getting worse and the ending was the worst.
Great cast, great acting, lots of interesting well directed scenes that added up to a pile of nothing. A huge pile of nothing notable for it's extreme nothingness.
It kept getting better until it kept getting worse and the ending was the worst.
This movie is the eighth or so most watched Netflix movie so maybe I am not the right audience or maybe I'm just not built to be pleased by the amazing huge pile of nothingness this ends up being.
I think it could have gone somewhere but it's a lot of stuff with a flurry of motion, well shot, with a huge jump at the end with a lots of action and then a landing that just doesn't stick.
Seraphim Falls (2006)
Maybe the best bad movie I ever saw.
Great in many ways and drop dead sucks in others. As a horserancher for 30 years I must fault them for how horses live, also how they should be treated for peak performance and what they need to eat and drink and sleep in rough and hot and dry terrains.
Acting was spot on but then again the cast is top notch. To watch Liam Neeson and Pierce Brosnan in the same frame is a delight. The directing was decent, a bit slow but altogether passable. The cinematography was better than the movie.
The script is often tedious, suffers from the fallacy of immitative form but is blessed with enough good writing and the ethical Pas de deux of two warriors to hide its boring moments between action packed lightning strikes.
Uncharted (2022)
A Saturday Popcorn Cartoon with Human Actors
Be generous and you can enjoy this silly romp with great gags. Over The Top in almost every direction. Fights, Choppers, Guns, Caves, Aircraft, Hot Ladies, Groovy Guys, Puzzles, Lots Of Indiana Jones, Buddies, Betrayals, Stunts Galore, Witty Repartee, Crosses & Double Crosses.
Altogether a delightful waste of time if you've got time to waste.
Self/less (2015)
Clever and held my interest.
Enough solid concept, action, talent & performance for an A-B+.
I find Ryan Reynolds, Ben Kingsley and Victor Garber always watchable and I did not guess the ending.
A Perfect Getaway (2009)
I hate being lied to.
Thankfully I recorded this on HBO and I had a fast forward on my remote. I hate being lied to by the filmmaker and in this film you are needlessly lied to and more than once. That sucks.
I like the cast: Zahn and Oliphant and Joan of Lelu are always worth watching so I struggled through by skipping from scene to scene until I could tell, as I did over and over again, that nothing was happening.
I was going to give up but fast forwarded it because I wanted to see the resolution and when I got there all I could say was "GIVE ME A BREAK!"
This is so contrived it's almost the only ending that could be written if you were given the assignment to write the most contrived ending.
I'm writing this line so my review is long enough to be published
but there really isn't anything to say about this terrible waste of time except don't waste your time.
Ronin (1998)
One of my Top Ten, PLUS Best Director's Comments Ever
This is a class action film with brilliant performances from gifted actors.
It's full of great car chases, techy caper process, lots of bullets, intrigue and twists, characters to love, characters to hate, huge emotional punctuations and subtle buddy buddy connections.
If you are in the mood to be pointlessly entertained and visually stunned grab some popcorn, sit back, strap yourself in and go for this ride.
Watch RONIN and then watch it again while listening to Mr. Frankenheimer explain how he made it.
I saw this film when it came out and then again on video and then on DVD and I could watch it once a year like I do Casablanca or Shawshank.
(f you liked how you spent your time with this film go see Reindeer Games, Frankenheimer's last feature film before he died which has many of the same elements plus Carlize Theron who I could watch doing laundry and listen to reciting numbers from the phone book)
Legends of the Fall (1994)
Great Epic Fable
I loved this movie the first time I saw it and I just saw it again on HULU.com and I still love it.
The acting is finely tuned and never heavy handed even though the story skates right up to the edge but never crosses into melodrama. LOTF is the exact point between a chic flick and a guy movie and from beginning to end it's has a great mood that flows like a river.
Every movie has a group of haters and that's just the nature of responses to art. You might be one of those haters but if you love early 20th Century westerns and epics and bonded families and love stories and can handle the violence you're more likely than not to enjoy this finely made film and thrive on the abundant joys and sadness and spiritual complexity of Legends Of The Fall.
Black Beauty (1994)
I think of this film often
I love this film and have seen it a few times. I am totally prejudiced because I live on a horse ranch with four horses and mine is an ex-stallion big (16h3) and, oh yeah, he's black.
You've got to give the film and the story some room and accept the anthropomorphic horse driven narrative. The story has all the highs and lows of cinematic drama without dipping into melodrama for more than a moment or two.
There are several versions of the book and this is the best production and the most emotional. If you like Old Yeller or The Yearling and you have some Kleenex nearby and want to get completely lost in a wonderful epic of a horse's life and horses he encounters and all the people he crosses paths with then grab some popcorn and your tissues and saddle up with this great movie.
Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (2006)
Never laughed so much during one movie. Tears rolled. Sides split.
Brilliant. Inspired. Ballsy beyond belief. Sasha Baron Cohen, the Evil Knievel of modern comedy, takes so many chances he's bound to miss sometimes but there aren't too many misses in this, his first starring movie. Gifted at the level of Robin Williams or Jonathan Winters or Steve Wright or Groucho Marx, Cohen possesses that rare ability to see the same world as we do, swallow it, and regurgitate back bizarre silly reflections that simultaneously make you laugh out loud, tickle your soul and show you the real work left for humanity. Some of the gags in this movie are so one of a kind, so sui generis, we might never see their like again. The only sad part is that BORAT becoming famous lessens the chance that there will ever be another BORAT movie with as much existential guerrilla comedy. BORAT in a hall or stadium of the unsuspecting is the finest example of asymmetrical comedic warfare that ever made the screen. I laughed so much tears rolled down my cheeks. Bravo!
Miami Vice (2006)
Wish I could have seen and heard more of it.
As a big fan of both Michael Mann fan and Miami Vice I enjoyed this movie and can forgive the plot for being ordinary and cliché.
Fox is always spot on and this was the best acting I've ever seen from Colin Farrell and the first time I ever saw him as a man and not a boy but the movie was too dark and the audio was either badly recorded or poorly mixed because I couldn't understand lots of the dialog and neither could two friends of mine in two other cities so it wasn't the theater.
I thought video worked better in Collateral. I liked his available light shooting on film for Robbery Homicide because with film you can use different films and push fast film and have more options but video needs more light and if you don't give it to it gets muddy.
Inside Man (2006)
I wanted to like it more.
In the way all orgasms are some kind of wonderful except occasionally they can be disappointing, this was disappointing. This is a good movie but I want better than good from Mr. Lee and this cast. The acting is fine although Mr. Washington is too familiar (didn't I see this guy in the one with the terrorists in New York and the one with him in a Hawaiian shirt in Florida), Ms. Foster is set cleverly against previous type yet distracting because of that in a way Mr. Washington wasn't distracting against type in Training Day, and Clive Owens seems wasted in the few moments we actually see him. The heist hook is clever but not fully explored, the few action sequences are nicely Hollywood and the plot keeps engorging but is ultimately a bit too flaccid to be penetrating. There is a little gem at the end but as I walked out of the theater I was thinking, "Was that it?"
Fear X (2003)
THE only way to SPOIL this movie is to advise you to watch it.
This may not be the worst movie I have ever seen, that dishonor goes to Magnolia but it's certainly a waste of my time I will never retrieve: the most pointless and taken as a whole, among the most boring.
If you don't mind that and you liked being with girls who left your testicles cyan, you might dig this. De Gustibus Non Disputatum Est. As Texans say; It's all hat, no cattle.
And I love John Turturro. The only saving grace was watching him act. That's why I gave it two stars. After watching this exercise in film processing for film processing's sake I discovered that the director, who does know how to light stuff and move the camera is DANISH. Now I find out! I was thinking part way through that this film was almost as slow a Bergmann and now I see why.
I've got nothing against Danes or other Scandinavians. I love their women and have been lucky enough to have been with several. I love Great Danes and live with them although they are only called Danes in English, I love their morning pastries, I adored the one funny Dane, Victor Borge although that is explained by his being Jewish more than Danish and I love their views on erotica but movie making and stand up comedy don't translate well through their stoic natures.
Here is the directors own words: "Of course that (annoys) a lot of people because they're not used to a film without an ending. But what the (heck) is an ending, you know?"
Me? I like endings. Preferably happy but even sad ones. And I don't mind a quandary ending once in a while or a questionable one. It's just the films without one that, as the director says, annoys me.
Domino (2005)
20 years ago this would be called an ART FILM and I would have avoided it.
It's not a 1 awful but it's a 3 awful. What a labor to sit through! I loved the style for about eleven and a half minutes and then it became work. 20 years ago this would have been called an ART FILM and I would have known to avoid it. There are some great moments for sure but as entertainment it fails. I loved MAN ON FIRE but found it borderline annoying and tedious because the filming and editing was so self aware and demanding. His brother Ridley annoyed me a little in GLADIATOR during the fight scenes. Maybe my eyes or brain doesn't work as well as the Scott brothers, most of whose work I applaud and some I've adored. Maybe I'm not visually as bored as they are. They probably find the JOHN FORD kind of invisible director storytelling a drag but in a zero sum set of ability to receive if I'm noticing the direction or the editing I'm deducting that attention from story and character. Directors who become famous for expressing their style need a few failures to put them back on the road to great storytelling. I wonder if Domino's Sad Demise had anything to do with seeing any of this.
The Cooler (2003)
Brilliant Fable
Wonderfully acted modern day fable of love luck ego venality and redemption. Baldwin and Macy are their brilliant opaque selves. The sex scenes are realistic. The director never gets in the way of the linear narrative and the A, B and C stories intertwine like rope. The camera loves Macy as it has in every single frame he's ever filled. Baldwin slips into his character like legs into stockings, Maria Bello proves beyond her role in PAYBACK that she can play in the Bigs and all the secondary character acting is seamless. A film more than a movie. A sleeper hit to me. You'll love it or hate it.
Magnolia (1999)
Now I know the worst movie I've ever seen.
For years several friends have been praising this film. I saw it today. Now I know the worst movie I've ever seen. I can't for the life of me figure out why some people love it. I want to know. I wanted to love it. I feel cheated. Boogie Nights was brilliant. Magnolia is filled with boring self conscious writing, boring unhappy people, boring way-too-long scenes punctuated by boring screechy overacting. I fast forwarded much of it and it was still boring and way too long. Sophomore hubris is the only answer I can figure out for the lack of editing. I still want to know what there is to like about it.